On composition of mechatronic components enabled by interoperability and portability provisions of IEC 61499: A case study

Interoperability is one of the most important features expected from distributed automation architectures. Achieving interoperability involves addressing issues related to synchronization of behavior, communication protocols, and data presentation formats. In this paper a case study on deployment of an automation application to a network of control devices with three different hardware/software platforms is presented to exploit benefits of the IEC 61499 architecture. Firstly, an overall control application with essentially distributed logic was created. This control application was then validated using closed-loop simulation and finally deployed to a network of control devices.